Minnesota's LGBTQIA2S+ Legacy
Portraits of Exemplars

Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins

by Joseph Alexander

oil paint on stretched linen, 36x52 inches

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Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins was the first openly transgender woman of color elected to public office in the United States, when she was selected by the voters of Minneapolis' 8th Ward in 2017. She is currently serving her third term on the Council.

An artist, poet, and transgender community activist, Jenkins has worked for Hennepin County and for the City of Minneapolis before becoming the first oral historian for the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection's Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota, documenting nearly 200 oral histories from the trans/gender queer community in the Upper Midwest. Jenkins is a cofounder of the Trans United Fund, building political power for the trans/gender queer community.

Among Jenkin's publications are "Tributaries: Poems Exploring Black History (2006)," "The T is not Silent: New and Selected Poems (2015), and contributions to "A Good Time for the Truth (2016) and "Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose, and Pride (2016)." The line "And what if love was the most powerful word in the ethos?" represented in her portrait is from her "A Requiem for the Queers (or why we wear the color purple)."

Jenkins is a mother and grandmother. She is a sought-after speaker and has traveled widely to give talks and presentations. She is the recipient of a Bush Fellowship as an extraordinary leader, and multiple other awards including being selected as the 2015 Twin Cities Pride Grand Marshal. In 2020, Andrea Jenkins was named by Queerty as among fifty heros “leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people.”